Tom Brokaw: The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is contributing to public distrust of the media

posted at 6:34 pm on May 7, 2012 by Allahpundit

Via Mediaite, I’m second to none in my contempt for this freak show but it’s bugging me that Brokaw’s indictment has been so well received. Does anyone really believe that the vast majority of the public even knows what the WHCD is, let alone has some strong ethical objection to it? In a way, his assumption about the public significance of the event reflects the same sort of Beltway myopia that he’s criticizing. This goes back to my post last week about how political junkies, by obsessing over every dumb poll and media distraction, are actually way out of touch with the sort of casual voter who’ll end up deciding the election. Those people probably don’t pay much attention until around September; meanwhile, you and I live or die every day with each new bit of news detritus that floats by. Sometimes I think the best way to blog politically would be to spend half an hour a day following the news and then give your gut reaction to whatever it is you stumbled across in that time. That’s probably a better insight into the mind of a swing voter than microanalyzing the latest campaign nontroversy. If anything, given the public appetite for gossip and celebrity crapola, the fact that the press spends one night a year hanging out with George Clooney probably increases the public’s esteem for them on balance.

In fairness to Brokaw, arguably he’s making a more subtle point — not that the public is reacting negatively to the WHCD but rather that the press itself is more apt to cocoon itself in Beltway culture because of sleazy networking and stargazing opportunities like the WHCD. If I thought getting rid of their prom would help peel away that cocoon, I’d take his side. But I don’t. The media is an industry and it’ll have its own industry culture whether or not everyone puts on tuxes one night a year and gladhands the Real Housewives of D.C. or whoever semi-ironically on the red carpet. Pauline Kael once said she didn’t understand how Nixon had won since no one she knew had voted for him. I don’t think nerdprom was her problem.

Breaking on Hot Air

Blowback

Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.

Actually, Tom, it’s you and your friends’ constant fellatio of democrat politicians that undermines your credibility. It makes you look rather whorish, know what I mean? Not so much journalist as gigolo. Oh, hell. You’re a slut, Tom. That’s the problem. You’re a democrat slut.

Nah. I think the problem some in the media have with nerdprom is twofold:

1. Tradition has been to mock the sitting president. It’s hard to do that, when Obama’s just so wonderful… (or vulnerable to real attack, based on his weakness/ideology. YMMV).

2. The biggest danger is that the curtain gets pulled back, and “mid-America” sees the truth- The DC politicoes and media are much more entertwined, similar, etc. than either is with Joe/Jane voter/viewer. We can’t let this reality be shown…

Yeah, that’s it. Its the correspondence dinner that has the masses doubting the press. It has nothing to do with the day in day out water carrying, omissions of unflattering stories, or overt worshipping. Its the dinner. Yeah, lets go with that.

Today we saw Mitt Romney’s version of leadership: standing by silently as his chief surrogate attacked the President’s family at the event and another supporter alleged that the President should be tried for treason. Time after time in this campaign, Mitt Romney has had the opportunity to show that he has the fortitude to stand up to hateful and over-the-line rhetoric and time after time, he has failed to do so. If this is the ‘leadership’ he has shown on the campaign trail, what can the American people expect of him as commander-in-chief?

Is Brokaw really this out of touch with America? Tommy boy! Hate to break it to you. But the WHCD is nothing compared to what you guys did just last month with the Trayvon Martain debacle. You sat with Charlie Rose, pondering the fact that you don’t know anything about Obama just weeks before he was elected. Your former employer’s cable news network (MSNBC) literally cropped the head out of a camera shot of a man carrying a rifle in order to prove that he was a racist…only to discover that the rifle toting man was BLACK! FAST AND FURIOUS!?!?! And you’re worried about some stupid dinner. Sheesh. Fine Tom. Whatever makes you feel better. Now go take a nap in a comfy chair and dream about the good ol’ days.

Tom, nice to see you are getting a little smarter since you retired. Perhaps you don’t remember Dan Rather? Yes that Dan Rather that is so callous he refuses to apologize for the Bush scandal he swore was the truth. We remember it Tom and we also remember the way the media is covering for that empty suit in the White House.

Translated: “I can’t contribute anything relevant about the subject of this thread, so I will simply try to hijack it.”

I can do that too. Just for you, Chuckles! From the Far-Right NPR, circa 2003:

Current criticism over Halliburton’s lucrative Iraq contracts has some historians drawing parallels to a similar controversy involving the company during Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration.

Nearly 40 years ago, Halliburton faced almost identical charges over its work for the U.S. government in Vietnam — allegations of overcharging, sweetheart contracts from the White House and war profiteering. Back then, the company’s close ties to President Johnson became a liability.

-snip-

The story of Halliburton’s ties to the White House dates back to the 1940s, when a Texas firm called Brown & Root constructed a massive dam project near Austin. The company’s founders, Herman and George Brown, won the contract to build Mansfield Dam thanks to the efforts of Johnson, who was then a Texas congressman.

After Johnson took over the Oval Office, Brown & Root won contracts for huge construction projects for the federal government. By the mid-1960s, newspaper columnists and the Republican minority in Congress began to suggest that the company’s good luck was tied to its sizable contributions to Johnson’s political campaign.

-snip-

By 1967, the General Accounting Office had faulted the “Vietnam builders” — as they were known — for massive accounting lapses and allowing thefts of materials.

Brown & Root also became a target for anti-war protesters: they called the firm the embodiment of the “military-industrial complex” and denounced it for building detention cells to hold Viet Cong prisoners in South Vietnam.

Maybe they’re finally starting to wake up to the fact that no one buys what they are selling and are scored less on the approval meter than used car salesmen and politicans, with apologies to used car salesmen.

So instead of some real introspection, it’s “hey maybe we shouldn’t cuddle up to the celebs as we are supposed to be above that”.

Yeah, sure, Tom. That’s it. It has absolutely nothing to do with your ethics and job performance.

It is NOT the terdprom which makes us distrust the Obama-fluffer media Mr NBC,
it is our access to the truth which ,we didn’t have earlier due to your monopoly , that has turned the tables on people like you!

tom, do you have any idea you and those like you have no idea how you and yours have totally tried to see to it that ALL the news we get on bhopress is what YOU think WE NEED to hear?

I remember back in the 60’s we had three stations to get our news. We would chose the one we liked, but every friggen one of them said the same thing to ‘give us all what they thought was needed to get for the news’.

Things have not change on bit, the bhopress is still going on 24/7 telling those that watch not the news, but what they want those watching need to hear?

So sad, so bad, there are millions that have not a clue what is going on in our nation. If they do, they think bho will give them whatever they need from his ‘stash’.

I actually don’t have a problem with the Correspondents’ dinner in principle — DC could use more traditions where people on opposite sides of various fences laugh together — especially if they can laugh at themselves a bit.

My problem with the event is what it’s become in recent years — a parade of celebrity sightings, about seeing and being seen, rather than taking a step back and casting an ironic eye on business as usual in DC.

I’m kinda with Brokaw on this one. The fact that he mentioned George Clooney indicates to me that he’s disturbed, as I am, by this having evolved into nerdprom.

Tom Brokaw has been contributing to public distrust of the media for decades. Brokaw has always been a clown, but since 2007, he has been an official obama assclown. The public has absolutely no reason to “trust” Brokaw, or the media in general, but there is especially no reason to “trust” pro-obama media outlets and talking heads.

I actually don’t have a problem with the Correspondents’ dinner in principle — DC could use more traditions where people on opposite sides of various fences laugh together — especially if they can laugh at themselves a bit.

My problem with the event is what it’s become in recent years — a parade of celebrity sightings, about seeing and being seen, rather than taking a step back and casting an ironic eye on business as usual in DC.

I’m kinda with Brokaw on this one. The fact that he mentioned George Clooney indicates to me that he’s disturbed, as I am, by this having evolved into nerdprom.

Chuckles3 on May 7, 2012 at 7:25 PM

THIS!!!!!!!!

The hollywood “haze” started with the Clintons, but the Obama administration has doubled down on this celebrity pandering. I have never understood why celebrities get invited to the nerd prom.

The integrity of journalism, if there ever was any, has been dead for years. The White House Correspondents Dinner is the annual funeral to acknowledge that fact and the correspondents are the pallbearers reinforcing it’s dead. A friend asked me one time what the difference between a prostitute and her pimp was when compared to a reporter and their editor. With a prostitute you know what you are getting, with a reporter you never know until its too late.

Allah, if someone wants to blog about those deciding the election, the Independents, the Centrists, the low-information voter, i.e., complete idiots, then it’s best to take a blunt instrument, bash it against one’s skull, and then try to write.

Too many of the WH “journalists” are impressed with their own celebrity, so they are right at home with the entertainment celebrities invited to the dinner. They can engage in mutual m*sturbation while enjoying food, wine, and sleazy comedians.

“If there’s ever an event that separates the press from the people it’s supposed to serve, symbolically, it’s that one.”

The MSM didn’t lose the people because of the WHCA dinner. It lost the people because it is biases, lazy, sloppy, hypocritical, exploitative, mendacious, and a passel full of seals trained by the Party of Julia.

It lost the people when cable and the internet ended its monopoly on the news and the “truth.”

Give my regards to Walter Duranty, Jason Blair, Paul Krugman, Frank Rich, and the rest of the despicable people that have written for the New York Times.

Tom, you’re rather cute in your glasses and complete disconnect. I’d pat you on the head but I think you’re contagious and would render me physically unable to laugh at the sheer bias you have had for 30yrs.

Tom Brokaw: The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is contributing to public distrust of the media

While true, it’s a distant tenth place to the biased crap that you, Tom Brokaw, and the rest of the media streamed into our homes every night for decades on end. Thankfully we now have other means to learn the truth without your hard left partisanship.

I’ll take Allah’s analysis as true, generally, and in this case I haven’t bothered to listen to the demonstrably retarded Bwokaw. But from the first summary of his comments that I read, I agree with Brokaw.

Taking part in nerd-prom reminds us, at least, that the White House press corps is a bunch of liberal partisans who live to jerk off their heroes the Democrats, and hate the Republicans as a matter of course. I don’t think there can be any doubt that the event serves to undermine their attempts to present themselves as serious journalists.

That they are not serious journalists is a given, of course, but the question here is appearance, not substance.

meanwhile, you and I live or die every day with each new bit of news detritus that floats by. Sometimes I think the best way to blog politically would be to spend half an hour a day following the news and then give your gut reaction to whatever it is you stumbled across in that time.

Dear AP,

I have seen a change in HotAir.

For the first few years I was excited to read the various thoughtful and passionate reports and analysis of the day’s news. Lately, however (since Hot Air changed hands, I think), the eclectic, perhaps nerdy, techno-political personality of HotAir has given way from MM’s penetratingly accurate, witty and ballsy perspective to a sort of weak, half-spun, half-directed, half-biased, quietly-agendized – and in all likelihood fully financially-motivated – belabored, bored mish-mash of the most impertinent, pointless recirculation of the what the rest of the MSM (and sometimes other productive web sites) have written.

HotAir went from leading the way to unfocusedly following, like a leashless dog following distractedly, goggle-eyed, short-leggedly after a confident master down the side walk of life.

News aggregation only goes so far. And nowadays I just surf the most pertinent dozen sites before I click on HotAir to see what the followers — the once-great — have to say. Perhaps you’ll get back to your founding craft with your recent staff changes, but I think it’s time to start writing the news rather than just passing it along.

Yeah, that’s it. Its the correspondence dinner that has the masses doubting the press. It has nothing to do with the day in day out water carrying, omissions of unflattering stories, or overt worshipping. Its the dinner. Yeah, lets go with that.

For the first few years I was excited to read the various thoughtful and passionate reports and analysis of the day’s news. Lately, however (since Hot Air changed hands, I think), the eclectic, perhaps nerdy, techno-political personality of HotAir has given way from MM’s penetratingly accurate, witty and ballsy perspective to a sort of weak, half-spun, half-directed, half-biased, quietly-agendized – and in all likelihood fully financially-motivated – belabored, bored mish-mash of the most impertinent, pointless recirculation of the what the rest of the MSM (and sometimes other productive web sites) have written.

HotAir went from leading the way to unfocusedly following, like a leashless dog following distractedly, goggle-eyed, short-leggedly after a confident master down the side walk of life.

News aggregation only goes so far. And nowadays I just surf the most pertinent dozen sites before I click on HotAir to see what the followers — the once-great — have to say. Perhaps you’ll get back to your founding craft with your recent staff changes, but I think it’s time to start writing the news rather than just passing it along.

flicker on May 7, 2012 at 11:41 PM

Huh. Can’t speak for AP, but what news, exactly, was this site breaking? I’ve been here since day one, and am struggling to remember exactly what ‘news’ the site has broken. I was always under the impression that it’s a repository for right-of-center news and views, commentary on the day’s news, and was hosted by some very insightful voices within the right-o-sphere.

Michelle Malkin’s well-articulated opinion pieces, which were part of the mix early on, are not exactly ‘breaking news.’

Yeah, I do wish I hadn’t posted that. And I was ready to ask Ed to delete it because it was probably the wrong venue, but then again I don’t have AP’s e-mail address, and I was agreeing with something AP wrote in his article, and it was something about which I had been becoming increasingly concerned.

I wasn’t talking about “Breaking News” with correspondents and tsunamis and bank robberies. And frankly I’m not sure what “breaking news” is anymore with Friday night news dumps, the 24-hour news cycle and media silence. And anyway, I am not particularly clear on the difference between straight news, investigative reporting, exposés and ongoing reporting of evolving stories.

But the truth is, as AP well knows, blogging is becoming more and more breaking news in itself, and it is changing the MSM’s reporting of stories. Nowadays, it is just as likely that a tweet leads to a blog, that creates a controversy that makes the MSM a few days later. And so catching someone in an outright lie and reporting it in a blog is now news in itself.

When AP wrote “meanwhile, you and I live or die every day with each new bit of news detritus that floats by. Sometimes I think the best way to blog politically would be to spend half an hour a day following the news and then give your gut reaction to whatever it is you stumbled across in that time” his words seemed to express what I’d been thinking for a long time. It seems to me that HotAir has shifted slowly from referencing the eclectic news of the day with a strong analysis and perspective to aggregating and retransmitting the MSM news with less skeptical argument.

But speaking of detritus, to give just two examples, I have been most struck by stories such as the slow water-drip torture reporting of the where’s-there’s-smoke-there’s-fire analysis of Cain’s alleged sexual impropriety in which every MSM smear was pretty much uncritically and unprotestingly recirculated on HotAir. (I say “smear” because it is the identical political tactic used by the MSM on Gingrich). And there was the on-going re-reporting of George Zimmerman’s supposedly racist shooting of Trayvon Martin. Now if I, in the first day or so, can clearly recognize, and remark upon on HotAir that the 911 tape was selectively edited, why couldn’t anyone who writes for HotAir comment on it? In other words, HotAir was more interested in traffic than in… oh, forget it.